


Come further Up, and Further In!

by Lindorinand



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Drabble, Experimental Style, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-14
Updated: 2015-02-14
Packaged: 2018-03-12 07:50:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3349355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lindorinand/pseuds/Lindorinand
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When everything else is stripped away, what lies at the heart of James Barnes?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Come further Up, and Further In!

**Author's Note:**

> This entire thing is an experiment in points of view and might come across as a little weird. But please read and review!

Overhead lights slowly slide into focus as the tang of metal and urine hit my nose. Groaning, I try to lift my hands to hold my aching head, only to stop short as heavy iron manacles bite into my wrists. My hands drop to the table and I try to figure out what is going on. Try to remember what I am doing strapped to a table out of Frankenstein's lab. Something is wrong. Well, more wrong than my apparent role in a mad scientist's lab. There was something left unfinished, someone left unprotected as I lay on this cold metal table struggling to remember.

There was a battle. An ambush with Nazis shooting blue beams as everything went to hell. I was captured. Chained to a laboratory table for experiments not even God himself knows. The image of a pale German soldier shadowed by scientist makes its way into my fragmented memories just as their real-life counterparts stroll into my room, err, cell. Everything goes black rather quickly after that.

 

* * *

 

Again, I come to groaning. This time with an incessant voice in my ear. I look over and up and up. “Steve.”

“I thought you were dead,” he says with a shaky grin.

"I thought you were smaller.” Wonder and confusion war with themselves. But I really don't have time to contemplate this aberration. Steve's mirage.

“I joined the army,” my would-be rescuer replies, dragging me off my table and out into the hall.

 

* * *

 

I cannot stop looking. Cannot stop watching. I do not recognize this Steve in a Greek God's body. But the inside, the inside is all Brooklyn and I am where I am supposed to be – watching Steve's back and finishing his fights.

 

* * *

 

Pain. Nothing but pain and strange voices in a language he cannot understand. They are trying to do something to him but he cannot stay here. He has something to go. He has someone to get to. He has to get out. But the voices are unrelenting. And he screams and

 

screams           

                        and

                                                         screams.

 

 Until he becomes nothing – not even a whisper in the void.

 

* * *

 

The Asset comes to with a start. Ice sloughing off in sheets as the Asset's eyes focus on the man standing before it. A folder and a few words later and the Asset has been released. Like a falcon from the jess, a hound from the kennel.

They expect the Asset to come back, and it will. Because the Asset knows nothing else.

 

* * *

 

Again, the Asset is defrosted. This time to the sight of a different man, a different lab. But nothing truly changes. This time the mission takes place in the United States of America. In Brooklyn. And everything changes.

 

The Asset finds itself unsettled. Something is wrong and it cannot figure out what. The Mission is in view. The parameters have been met. And yet, something is

                      off.

 

It/he/I wander down narrow alleyways.

           Looking

                                      Looking

 

Something is missing and it/he/I cannot figure out what.

 

No

                           No

 

              No

 

He/I cannot go back. Something

         Something

                                      Someone

                        is

gone

 

* * *

 

The Asset sees the man again. The man from the bridge. And he is familiar. But that is not strange, because he is the mission and the Asset knows of nothing but the mission. And yet that is wrong, mission parameters do not line up.

He must be stopped.

 

The way he moves. The way he fights. All resonate with...what? Underneath the coding and the blood and the cold; An adamantium center in his substructure.

 

“Then finish it. 'Cause I'm with you 'til the end of the line”

 

End of

 

     the

 

line

              Finish

                           it

 

    Wait

 

There is a face. Narrow with high cheek bones and bright blue eyes. Eyes the color the early morning sky as larks, still bravely singing, fly. The Asset does not recognize him, not quite. But there is something...something...something...about those eyes that pull.

 

They fall

 

down

 

down

 

down

 

And it/he has to go after. Has to protect, for there is something about that man that the Asset recognizes. A mission. The Mission. Left Alone. Left unfinished.

 

And so he/it will pull the man from the water, and the Asset will watch and learn. And he will find out what roots have remained untouched by the frost.

 

* * *

 

Overhead lights slowly slide into focus. The smell of anesthesia and bleach burns, offset by the starch in the linens. Soft breathing draws my attention away from my surroundings.

 

A man is sleeping upright in a chair on my left. A broad man with sun-like hair and a crooked smile; sitting so precariously a solitary finger could push him over.

 

I know him.

 

And here, beneath my gaze all is well.

**Author's Note:**

> This dabble is based off the idea that the serum magnifies everything – good and bad. We get a glimpse of what happens to the Johann Schmidt and Steve Rogers, but what about James Barnes? What is at the core of who Barnes (not the Winter Soldier) is? (Based more on the movie than the comic book verse.)  
> Oh, I also paraphrased itty-bitty segments from In Flanders Fields, Sherlock, LOTR, and Harry Potter and the title is from Narnia – got to give credit where credit is due!


End file.
